Thursday, February 5, 2009

Class Blogging on Winter in Southern State

So, here I am, sitting in my Communications class, while the professor talks about news leads at the front of the room. I'm paying attention to him, but there's thirty minutes left before we get out for the end of the day and I've been meaning for several days to post on the unconscionably severe weather occurring here in Southern State.

It is so cold.

Sweet nelly, it is so cold.

In fact, according the CNN Weather, it is currenly 22°F here at Major University.

I have a theory that one's ability to handle lower temperatures is directly related to body fat. My father, who weights about 225lbs, keeps our house like an ice-box even in winter, and can be perfectly comfortable or even hot when I am freezing. Powell is the same, along with most other men I know.

Then there's me, at 134lbs, with almost no natural insulation against the cold.

I just don't do well in winter, and winter here is particularly cruel; Southern State manages to combine frigid air and biting wind with a near total lack of snowfall, creating pointless misery.

Last week, when two to three inches of snow gave us two snow days, we were elated. Yet such a thing almost never happens. I honestly think that if I lived in a snowier climate, where the cold were moderated by beautiful scenery, I could take more enjoyment in this season. Alas, I do not, and by the end of January I'm typically longing for summer.

Winter is hard for me, makes everything more difficult. Large coats and the need to cover up constrain fashions, harsh air chaps lips and dries skin, cutting winds blow long blonde hair askew, and leaving the house is a physically painful affair.

In summer, though, I fare better. I even look better.

When summer reaches its white-hot peak in Southern State, I'm in my element. Beginning in April, temperatures here inch into the low eighties, and by May are typically reaching the low to mid-eighties every day.

Our first ninety-degree day usually comes in early June, though sometimes in late May. July and August will take us into the nineties almost every day, and for several magical (and miserable) weeks in August there is the potential for temperatures to reach 100°F or even hotter.

This I really don't mind, though. My comfort zone is 85°F-93°F or so, and I'd take 90°F over 29°F any day.

When the sun blazes in the sky, I can shed the thick skins of jackets and coats (which I typically reach for when the temperature is lower than 75°F), donning small tee-shirts and shorts that hug my small waist. My hair can hang free, safe from the huge blasts of wind that never blow in the summertime. Only slight breezes disturb the air in June.

I feel so beautiful then.

This is making me rethink some of my plans. Way back in the summer, I wrote a long post about wanting to visit many places, including New England, Upstate New York, and the Midwest.

Yet with each passing year, I seem to grow more averse to the cold and more adapted to the heat. I doubt at this point that I could even return to Native State, where I think the winters would murder me.

Perhaps I should look south. I mean, it's not that I never want to go North, but it's going to be hard.